Re: [asa] Shermer and Inevitability

On Fri, 6 Nov 2009, Nucacids wrote:

> Not necessarily.  If event X has the likelihood of happening once every 3
> billion years, then after 3 billion years, it becomes inevitable and it
> happens once.

Mike,

I don't follow this. You seem to be saying that since in a standard deck
of playing cards one thirteenth of them are kings, therefore if I draw
thirteen cards from the deck, it is inevitable that one of them will be a
king. This is easily shown to be false. There are many 13-member sets of
cards from that deck that contain no kings.

Gordon Brown (ASA member)

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Received on Fri Nov 6 22:45:57 2009